I described Nagoya as not a particularly exciting city, but at least there were few tourists. I spent a full day here and it was enough to explore.
I traveled from Kyoto to Nagoya by Willer bus on Friday, with the stop at the main train station. There are 24-hour and day passes available for the metro, obviously the 24-hour pass was the best choice.
After checking into my accommodation, I walked around the city center. You need to get off at the Sakaemachi stop, where the Mirai Tower and Oasis 21 are located. The tower also functions as an observation deck and looks beautiful when lit up at night. Oasis 21 is a terraced building with a good view of the tower. It’s worth coming up here both during the day and at night.
On Saturday, my first destination was the Atsuta-jingu shrine, one of Nagoya’s most famous. Admission is free, but honestly there’s nothing special about it. I guess the bar was set pretty high after Kyoto…
From here I traveled to another well-known temple, Tōgan-ji. I got off at Motoyama station on the Meijo metro line, from there it’s just a few minutes’ walk. At first I thought I’d come to the wrong place. There was no one there except me, you can tell it’s a bit away from the city center. The green Buddha statue is the interesting feature, it’s especially a peaceful place when you’re alone. It was worth a visit, then I traveled back to the castle.
I also took the Meijo metro to Meijo Park, next to which stands the castle. The exterior itself is similar to the one in Osaka (although looking around, most Japanese castles look very similar). The admission is 500 yen, but you can only view it from the outside.
From here it’s just a few minutes’ walk to Endo-ji shopping street. Needless to say, this is also covered, like most in cities. This district was the central part of the old town. The crowd was huge, you could barely move on the street, so I didn’t spend much time here.
I took the metro to the Mirai Tower to see it together with Oasis 21 in daylight as well. After a late lunch, I walked to the Science Museum building and the nearby Osu Kannon temple. From here starts the Osu Shotengai covered shopping street.
The last activity was the city’s main observation deck, the Sky Promenade, where I bought a ticket in advance for a time slot before sunset. The building stands next to the main station, you need to approach the elevator from the ground floor, which takes you up. There’s no need to buy the ticket in advance, because there are plenty available on site, there were very few people there. The view is very beautiful. The weather was quite clear, so the entire city was visible. You can almost walk all the way around, with many benches placed along the way.
On Sunday I just took the metro to the station, from where I traveled to Tokyo by Shinkansen.
As I wrote at the beginning, Nagoya is not an unmissable place, but it’s worth a day trip. It’s more relaxed than Osaka or Tokyo and with fewer tourists, Japanese daily life might be more enjoyable. For this reason alone, this lightning visit was a good idea!
